Men strode from the stairwell and the arched side doors that led to the kitchen. In a matter of seconds, three dozen clansmen stood with weapons in hand, awaiting orders.

"Take her out," the laird cried. "Take the witch to the cliffs. Her evil will stain Glenlyle no more."

Maire barely felt the cruel fingers closing around her arms. She barely sensed her body lifted, dragged from the smoky hall.

There was no point in feeling or in fighting.

With Coll dead, there was no point in anything at all.

JAMEE HEARD THE SEAsomewhere far below her, a low, steady drumming. The stars were gone now, veiled by clouds.

The night was still. The wind was still.

Fragments of memory burned through her head and she knew with blinding certainty that an old tragedy was about to be repeated.

Blackness stretched before her. Jamee felt the rugged outline of the stone well and eased to the crown of the hill. No one would bother her. The security team was assigned to guard the front gate, which was the only place the castle could be penetrated.

She looked east, watching for the first faint specks of pink that would hail the dawn. Her gift would be given then. With it the past would be laid to rest, she prayed.

It was her only wish, offered up in the still of the night with a heart of fierce and focused intensity.

Something moved behind her. Darkness parted and resolved into a hard, angry body. Cold laughter spilled over the hillside.

"How nice of you to come, Ms. Night." A hand dug into Jamee"s neck, shoving her toward the ragged edge of the cliff.

No one saw her stumble.

No one heard her cry, which was drowned out by the thunder of the waves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

SOMETHING WOKEIANfrom odd, fragmented dreams filled with peat smoke and the stamp of horses. He remembered the agonized cry of a woman.

He sat up sharply, his breath coming fast. "Jamee?"

Something brushed against his foot.

"Where are you, Jamee?"

The moon was gone. No light filtered through the glass windows of the master bedroom high beneath the north tower.

Again came the brush of warmth against his leg. Definitely fur. A pair of amber eyes blinked, glowing from the darkness. Cat"s eyes.

"What areyou doing here?" Ian snapped, feeling like a fool for talking to a cat.

The eyes moved. A moment later, something clattered to the floor beside the bed.

Frowning, he turned on the bedside lamp, then reached down for the hard plastic outline of his beeper. Even as he touched it, he felt the vibration of an incoming message.

Cursing, Ian fingered the dial and read the luminous number.

Duncan.

The phone was just where it had fallen, wedged between his shirt and two damask pillows.

Jamee"s clothes were gone. Ian stabbed out a number.

No response. The phone was completely dead. A cut line?

He pushed to his feet. Instantly waves of pain dug at his forehead. Dreams tangled his logic, playing at the corners of his vision. From somewhere deep within the castle"s heart he seemed to hear a woman"s voice, raised in grief.

The sound shook him, phantom and yet truer than the stones beneath his running feet. He had a sudden memory of pain burning through his chest, dealt by an enemy"s blade. He thought of a man who had lain in fever, caught on the very edge of death. He had failed her then. And he had lost the woman known as Maire MacKinnon.

Ian"s hands shook as he found his way to the Great Hall and pounded up the stairs to his office.

The phone line was dead there, too. Cursing, he shouted for Angus and the security officer in the castle courtyard.

"Jamee"s gone," he snapped. "Take two men and search the castle. Send the rest out over the grounds. Have one of them use a cell phone to find out why Duncan MacKinnon paged me."

He didn"t stop for further explanations. The cold stab of fear at his chest told Ian that only perfect logic would save Jamee now.

THE CAT"S FOOTINGwas sure and certain even on the sharp rocks. He inched through the darkness, eyes burning as he relied on the ancient senses of a hunter.

Light danced beside him. "You are certain this is the way, Gideon?"

The cat meowed once.

There were strange sounds from the shadows, a dozen unfamiliar scents that called to him. But Gideon held to the desperate task before him.

"I should have known. I should haverealized. " Terence Night"s lanky frame took shape in the darkness, and the turmoil in his eyes seemed at odds with the color that shimmered around him. "I had a sense about that young man. He was too interested, too quick to be helpful. At the time, I thought he was simply being nice." He made a ragged sound. "When will I learn that most people aren"t nice?"

The cat was outlined against the sky as he made a twisting flick of his tail.

"Yes, I know that trusting is in my nature. But if I hadn"t been so trusting, Jamee wouldn"t be in danger now. She wouldn"t be trembling, her fear about to choke her." His light dimmed for a minute. "Gideon, how muchlonger? "

The cat gave a low cry and then disappeared behind a row of rocks.

"BLAST IT, DUNCAN, how muchlonger? "

Adam Night sat tensely, his fingers clenched on the window of the helicopter chattering noisily over the darkened glen. He had arrived at Dunraven just in time to claim a seat as Duncan left for Glenlyle.

"Five minutes. Maybe less, Adam. We"re above Glenlyle land now. In a few minutes, we should be able to see the castle."

"What I want to know is why?" Adam said harshly. "Why would he target Jamee after all these years?" His hands opened and closed. "But it doesn"t really matter. All that matters is getting her back safely." His voice wavered. "This man, McCall. He"s good. The best, you said?"

"He"s good," Duncan said grimly.

"He damned well better be." Adam stared down into the darkness, then stiffened. "Isn"t someone down there running along the cliff?"

PAIN BURNED THROUGHJamee"s forehead as she tried to push to her feet from the sharp stones. "Who are you? What do you want?"

A match hissed and light flared around her. "I want everything. Everything that"s yours.

Everything that should have been ours." A face took shape from the darkness. Long hair.

Sulky eyes.

Jamee blinked. "Rob? What areyou doing here?"

His laughter was sharp and very cold. "Not Rob, Thomas. Thomas Starkey. Don"t you recognize the name?"

Jamee eased backward, fighting a wave of panic. A corner of the stone well was behind her, digging into her back. Beyond that lay emptiness and two hundred feet of cliff straight down to the beach. "Starkey. Oh, God, not the man in the car. The man who shoved me into the closet."

Her voice shook.

"That"s the one. You remember my brother even now, don"t you? Your brother Adam was in the same foster home that we were in. It wasus your parents were going to take,us instead of him."

Rob"s lips twisted with anger. "Then they saw Adam. Adam with his Indian face and his quiet arrogance. How soon they forgot about me and my brother."

Jamee"s fingers slid from the rock. "You knew Adam back then?"

"He was cunning. Always so cool. He knew just how to use his power over other people, especially adults. He took away what should have been ours, but my brother and I waited. We survived. And we swore that one day we would have everything he had stolen from us."

His eyes glittered, sharp as glass. "You had velvet dresses and little lace dolls. Your brothers had new shoes, warm coats and laughter, while we had nothing, only each other. He drove trucks so I could enter the merchant marine, but even that was ruined. And one day my brother was taken away, thrown into prison." His boots tore across the heather as he lunged for Jamee.

"Now your Adam will die, but first you"re going to bleed-to pay for what your parents did, Jamee Night. I promised my brother I would see to that."

Jamee felt his hands scrape at the stone wall, only inches from her neck. She threw herself backward with a gasp. She fell sideways, then plunged down the sharp, rocky incline. Little stones hurtled after her, digging into her cheeks and drawing blood.

The figure in the shadows loomed over the edge of the hill. "Where are you, Jamee? Talk to me. You can"t get away this time."

His voice fell. Changed. "Come out, little girl. You"re the meal ticket, remember?"

Gray light stole across the horizon where the sun struggled to break free of the hills. Jamee clawed her way over the gorse and heather, trying to find a place to hide before dawn broke.

"There"s no escaping. Why even try?"

She heard the snap of metal and then a beam of light tunneled through the darkness.

"I"m right here, right behind you. We"ll squeeze all the money we want out of your brother.

Then we"ll dispose of you-just the way we"re going to dispose of Adam." He spoke in a strange singsong, and Jamee realized he was no longer reachable by logic.

She bit back a moan as light crisscrossed the ground before her, capturing her hand in its glowing beam before she pulled away.

"I see you," her stalker hissed. His feet scraped on the rocky incline, already far too close.

And then the earth fell away. A row of ragged stones rose before her, and beyond that lay the chill darkness with the wind snarling off the sea.

Jamee stumbled to her right until the way was cut off by a solid overhang of impassable granite. There was no going forward and no going backward. She would die here, caught on this cliff, just as another woman had died here centuries before.

Dry undergrowth rustled behind her. "They won"t find me. I took another photographer"s place at the last minute. I"ve been watching you for months with a little help from a woman in your brother"s office. It didn"t take much to get her to fill me in on every one of your destinations. It must be because of my kind face," he said, the words grotesque and mocking. "Now I know everything there is to know about you, Jamee Night," he whispered. "It was so easy to pass as one of Hidoshi"s staff. All I had to do was pretend to be waiting to shoot-always waiting for the weather to clear or the light to be better. Fools, all of them."

From the far side of the hill came the shudder of motors. Jamee stood at the edge of the cliff while wind gusted up around her, straight up from the sea. Dear God, they would be too late.

"No one can help you. Either come with me now or you"ll take a pleasant dive off the edge of this cliff." His laughter grew sharp as rocks rattled hollowly in the darkness. "Do you hear me, little girl?"

Motors coughed and lights exploded over the hillside. Jamee blinked, blinded. A second later, she realized that her pursuer would have the same response. She lurched toward the ruined well, her feet slipping on the bare stone. Her shoulder struck bone and muscle, then she plunged sharply down the hill.

"Dammit, you"remine! You"re not getting away now. I"ve waited too long for this."

Jamee slid desperately down the hill. Jagged fingers of scree dug into her legs as light flooded the stone ridge. A helicopter screamed over the top of the castle, then dived toward her. Jamee could have sworn she saw a dark shape outlined against one of the rocks, tail erect and ears arched forward.

She heard a panting breath behind her and ran, biting back a cry of pain as a boulder grazed her ankles.

A blade hissed through the air, striking her shoulder.

Wincing, she stumbled as the whirling blades rushed down above her.

"Get down, Jamee!" Ian roared. A shot screamed over the heather.

Twisting, she leaped a row of boulders and fell in their lea as another shot rent the air. Gravel and dry heather dug at her face, caught in the updraft of the helicopter while Rob worked his way down behind her, cursing.

He clambered over the rocks, inches away. "You"re mine." His knife burned in the cold light cast from the sky. "No one"s taking that away from me," he hissed.

A blur of gray plunged over the hillside as he spoke. Cursing, he toppled backward, his knife clattering onto the well. Jamee heard the high, shrill cry of a cat and then Ian hurled himself from the helicopter.

There was another burst of gunfire, and Jamee saw her brother plunging over the hill. Then Ian"s arms were around her, his hands locked against her waist.

"Thank God, you"re safe."

The faint, sweet smell of bruised heather filled her lungs as Adam cursed at the top of the hill.

"Go, Ian," she rasped. "It was Adam he was after, Adam all along. He-he"s mad."

Ian"s hands left her. He stumbled toward the two bodies silhouetted against the beam of the helicopter while Jamee"s heart raced in sickening fear.

Adam twisted, driven back toward the edge. It might have been her imagination, but years later Jamee would still wonder at what she heard next. The sound was low, almost otherworldly, the furious growl of an animal from the wild. There was a blur of movement from the gorse and her kidnapper twisted sideways, his hands raised protectively over his eyes.

He screamed in pain or terror, then lurched backward, only to find a greater terror. His hands rose, flapping at emptiness while his eyes filled with the unspeakable certainty of the death that waited below, in the sharp rocks at the base of the cliff.